The “About Us” page is important on every website. But I’d contend that it’s most important of all on a business website. For what are valuable visitors if they’re not people who’ve come to find out about your company? Unfortunately, on many business sites the “About Us” page is the most formulaic, designed-by-committee and downright boring page there is. Which is a real shame.
So what could you replace your “About Us” page with to make it more attractive? First of all, think about what people might be using it for. In many cases, it’s to get some reassurance that you’re a suitable company to do business with, after they’ve looked at one of your products but before they make an enquiry. All they want to know is “do you serve the country or region I’m in?”, “are you the size of company I want to do business with?” and other such elementary questions. The answers should be visible at a glance, perhaps as bullet points. Indeed, an easy to read style should be a prerequisite of an “About Us” page. A question-and-answer format can work very well.
If there’s a message you think is really important, especially if it’s to do with exclusivity or uniqueness, get that in the headline. For example, suppose you’re the UK’s exclusive distributor for Blau Widget GmbH. If your website has done the job of convincing a prospect that Blau Widget GmbH’s products could be what they need, the last thing you want is for them to go off looking to see if there are any other suppliers around.
Also use the “About Us” page to personalise the company as much as possible. This isn’t just for tiny three-person companies. Instead of dryly quoting a tedious mission statement, why not have a couple of paragraphs of quotes from the managing director?
Therefore, can you just confirm, the ‘About Us’ page on most of our websites can still be titled as such for the use of those already in the site but the page description, meta tag, should say “History of Blue Widget manufacturing company” or something to that effect?
In essence, I guess I’m saying, is it still ok tohave the page title on your menu as ‘About us’ and so on throughout the site?
Just redesigning our site at present and your articles are ideal for my new content and page structures etc. Thanks.
Thanks.
Hi Jo – yes, I’d keep the link as “About Us”, as it’s what people look for. But on the page itself, headline and title it with something more informative and more likely to be searched-for.